Protect meteorological expertise and disaster response capabilities

The Trump administration's efforts to dismantle weather forecasting and disaster response capabilities are deeply concerning. Cutting funding for NOAA labs that research how climate change impacts extreme weather events will undermine our ability to accurately predict and prepare for life-threatening hazards like hurricanes, floods, and wildfires. Closing the Miami lab that flies hurricane hunter missions into storms would cripple data collection vital for hurricane forecasting. Likewise, revoking $3.6 billion in FEMA grants to communities for disaster preparedness and envisioning a drastically downsized FEMA that shifts costs to states puts American lives at risk. As the climate crisis accelerates, we need to bolster, not gut, our meteorological expertise and emergency management capacity at the federal level. I urge you to protect NOAA's budget and maintain FEMA as a robust federal agency to ensure the nation is ready to anticipate, respond to, and recover from the intensifying natural disasters brought on by global warming. Diminishing these capabilities now would be dangerously shortsighted.